Francesco Bagnaia doesn’t think that MotoGP introducing its tyre pressure monitoring technology for the British Grand Prix is anything “to do with safety.”
MotoGP elected to introduce the system – which allows the series to monitor the tyre pressures of each rider across a full grand prix distance – for the weekend following a lengthy development phase for safety reasons according to the championship, with a minimum reading of 1.9 bar for the front tyre and 1.7 bar for the rear for at least 50% of the grand prix to prevent tyre issues going forward.
Running lower tyre pressures on paper provides more grip and therefore a performance advantage, with the upcoming introduction of the rule potentially coming with the pitfall of changing the competitive order depending on how well each bike copes with the higher minimum pressures.
Factory Ducati rider Bagnaia reckons that the new minimum tyre pressure rules have nothing “to do with safety” as he believes running underneath the limit provides little performance benefit, and on the contrary causes the bike to handle worse – increasing the potential for crashes.
“I don’t think I can speak about why (tyre pressure limit introduced for Silverstone), it’s something to do with safety,” explained Bagnaia.
“I don’t think it’s to do with safety because we’ve never had any problems with the tyre pressures, if the rear is down (under the limit) there is a clear advantage in terms of performance and grip.
“But the front tyre if its below you suffer, you feel different things but at 1.9, 1.8 (bar of pressure) this is the best one possible and if you go lower the bike starts to move and if you go higher the bike starts to move.
“So for me it is something that is not to do with safety but this is what they have decided.”
The reigning MotoGP world champion reckons that the riders may have to “understand and improve” their respective riding styles if following other pilots for a significant period as a result of likely over-pressurised tyres compared to what they’re used to.
“For the race for sure if you are behind someone for too many laps, for example 50% of the race you could be above the limit and spending that amount of time behind someone the temperature goes up and up and you start to lose (grip),” continued the Italian.
“So we have to understand and find which way to improve our riding style when the tyre pressures start to grow, and hopefully in the box try and find a way to improve these characteristics.”
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